Improvise with your (inner) voice

[Trumpjerele]

I have a clear goal.

I want to play the melodies that occur to me in my head. I don't want to play patterns, licks, nor do I want to let my muscle memory decide for me.

What I am not clear about is the way to get to the goal, for the moment I am helping myself with the guitar, sometimes playing the notes I sing, other times I play a chord, sing a melody and go to the trumpet to find out what I have sung.

Any other ideas?
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Notice!!! Amateur musician without formal studies

Trumpet: Yamaha 8310Z
Mouthpiece: the great Yamaha11b4

Sax tenor: Yamaha YTS 23
Mouthpiece: Otto link tone edge

[Danbassin]

How long have you been playing trumpet?

I ask because that ‘kinetic’ second nature/muscle memory thing comes up after a LONG time of playing ALL the scales all over the horn, over, and over, and over again. As the great one says at the beginning of this video, All you have to do is practice scales, scales, and more scales:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUij8FCg0z8

As a composer and trumpeter who loves playing idiomatic music, but whose improvisatory leanings may be closer to what you’re asking about, I want to make sure that what I started out with doesn’t seem contradictory to your goal. ALTHOUGH I’m referring to the essential patterns of music - a chromatic scale from the very bottom through the very top of your range; Clarke-style scale fragments, and so on - these connect your ears, chops, and fingers so that you can produce what you’re hearing and feeling inside. The improvisation that I am most frequently engaged in is ‘free’ and not standard idiomatic jazz or pop, so part of my ‘scale’ practice extends to variations on concepts from the Laurie Frank FLEXUS book, 24-note quarter-tone ‘chromatic’ scales, multi phonic ‘scales’ (same played fundamental, same sung fundamental, or moving split-tones), and other things where I can bring a similar application utility as a young pianist would, moving from scales and Hanon exercises to a Mozart C-Major.

Hope this is helpful - happy practicing!
-DB
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Daniel Bassin
Conductor/Composer/Trumpeter/Improviser/Educator
I play:
Monette - CORNETTE/PranaXLT-STC Bb/MC-35/Raja A Piccolo;
Kromat C-Piccolo; Thein G-Piccolo; Various antique horns
MPCs - Monette Unity 1-7D and DM4LD

[kehaulani]

It's very simple. Write and play/hear your own independent licks in all keys and varying them to match whatever chord you might be playing. Stretch your licks into longer phrases. That's all.
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"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Bird

Yamaha 8310Z Bobby Shew trumpet
Benge 3X Trumpet
Benge 3X Cornet
Adams F-1 Flghn

[Jaw04]

1. Improvising "freely" - with no constraints of song, meter, key, anything. Trying to play only what you hear in your head.

2. Improvising freely but adding a restraint - stay in a particular scale. Still striving to play what you hear. Go through all keys.

3. Improvising freely but adding another restraint - time, and still striving to play what you hear.

4. Applying that approach to tunes requires a solid grasping of the chord changes of the tune. That means playing the roots, the 1 3 5, patterns, over and over again until you have the changes down. Then eventually applying the freedom aspect. But you can't play and hear freely on tunes you don't know very well.

[TrumpetMD]

[Trumpjerele]

Thank you all for your responses.

Danbassin, I'm sorry but I didn't understand that about the 24 note scales. I have the flexus book, but I don't quite know what you mean. By the way, I've been playing the trumpet for about 19 years, I consider myself a serious amateur.

Keahulani, thanks for the suggestion, I'm not sure my humble sung phrases deserve that much attention, but I get the point, it's something I'll try.

Jaw04, if I'm honest with you almost everything I "come up with" in my head is tonal and quite simple really. I guess the ability to sing complex phrases comes with time and listening to a lot of music. Otherwise I've been doing something similar, only instead of singing inwardly, I would sing and then repeat with the trumpet, for the moment on a modal basis.

TrumpetMD, in my practice I include scales and patterns, maybe not as many as I should, practice time is so limited.

All this concern comes from my jazz combo teacher. He basically told me that in my improvisations there were notes, arpeggios, rhythmic monotony, and few melodies.

He told me that I had to practice creating melodies, motifs, etc, and that a good way to do it was to sing and play what you sing.
_________________
Notice!!! Amateur musician without formal studies

Trumpet: Yamaha 8310Z
Mouthpiece: the great Yamaha11b4

Sax tenor: Yamaha YTS 23
Mouthpiece: Otto link tone edge

[Richard III]

[Trumpjerele]

[TrumpetMD]

[kehaulani]

[victorhaskins]

[windandsong]

Deal with sound. Then deal with data.
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Bach 180/37
#7 pipe

[hvtrumpet]

Hi,

there are probably two parts to a practical answer to your question:

1) Fill your head with good ideas: listen a lot to all sorts of music, transcribe solos by ear of music you like, do lots of singing and ear training

2) Make a good connection between your head and your instrument. One of the most fun exercises for this is to play a known melody with different starting notes. Start simple (Happy Birthday, When the saints) and depending on your abilities, go more difficult (All the things you are, Donna Lee).

HV